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Bringing home success

After prospering overseas, a woman-owned business brings innovation to the US

You live it, go to sleep with it, wake up the next morning and it's still yours.

Leigh Kirtley is a "machine," according to her banker. In
the past year, she has launched 10 new petfood products,
established her OmniPro superpremium petfood line in 21
countries outside of North America and set in motion an
ambitious US launch to start in early 2008. Until recently she
has done all this on her own in the male-dominated pet industry
from an office in tiny Madison, Mississippi, USA.

"It's a lot to manage," she says. "When my banker said I was
a machine, I replied, I have to be!'"

But her management achievements this year have included
finding key support people and partners and developing a plan
for what she insists will be controlled growth. "Companies can
grow themselves out of business," she says, "so we are
targeting a 50% growth rate because we feel this is the most we
can manage."

Through the back door

Kirtley started OmniPro in 2004 to complement her export
business, K & K Pet Products Export Inc., which she opened
in 2000. After successfully exporting products from Chomp Inc.
(treats), Nutri-Vet Nutraceuticals LLC and Feline Fresh (cat
litter) to 51 countries, she decided she needed petfood to
round out the line. To better control the product line in what
she saw as an ever-changing regulatory environment, she
launched her own petfood company.

"For now we are a boutique operation in a highly competitive
niche market, one of the main reasons we decided, from a
marketing standpoint, to come in through the back door,'"
Kirtley says. "We established dominance in the less competitive
overseas market first to achieve a stable base of repeat
customers. We simply found a need in the global market and
filled it. And, I had established contacts through trade shows
and referrals in the industry."

Kirtley's college degree is in international trade, and she
had worked as a trade specialist for the state of Mississippi,
helping companies import and export. When she decided to leave
that job and start her own business, she chose the pet industry
because of its high volume, which she had noticed while doing
research for other companies. "It was a numbers game," she
says.

Unique ingredients

OmniPro began with a line of superpremium dry foods that has
grown to 23 SKUs for all lifestages. The formulations were
developed using chicken and rice or lamb and rice as the base,
plus other ingredients designed for export to the European
Union and other countries with strict regulatory environments
for imports, according to Kirtley.

She explains that she worked with experts at her contract
manufacturers to develop the formulations. "I tried to keep
them clean so they would clear customs in all the countries,"
she says, referring to the dry food formulations.

When it came time to develop a wet food line, Kirtley had
three goals:

Innovation;

Humanization;

Health.

The result was OmniPro Holistic canned foods with unique
ingredients such as caviar, sweet potatoes and pheasant. The
base protein for most of the wet products is salmon because,
Kirtley believes, "You don't have to explain the health
benefits of salmon. It's delicious with exceptional nutritional
value (omega 3 essential fatty acids) found in few other
foods.

"For the carbohydrate, I didn't want rice or potato because
everyone has it, and it's bland. I wanted something different,"
she adds. "The caviar was a natural for me because I go to the
sushi bar, and I get that all the time."

To Kirtley, adding caviar was also a way to humanize the
productand it worked. Sales doubled, she reports, after the
first four flavors hit the market in September 2006.

Kirtley built on the initial success by adding lifestages to
the wet foods line. These include puppy and kitten formulas
with a double protein source (chicken added to the salmon),
plus lite products with a second main ingredient (besides the
salmon) of sweet potato.

Kirtley is positively bullish on the latter ingredient. "The
sweet potato not only adds an all-natural flavor to the product
but also delivers health benefits without the extra calories,"
she says. Plus, her home state of Mississippi is a major
producer of this crop, and it's a staple in many cultures
around the world where OmniPro products are sold.

Building a team

With the global success of Omni-Pro, Kirtley believes other
elements are aligning to launch it in the US, which she's
planning for the first quarter of 2008. But rather than
continuing to go it alone, now she's reaching out to a team of
experts to help, including a transportation manager and CPA,
both part-time and off-site.

Kirtley also relies on customer service representative Sheri
New and a national sales firm that is working to get the
products into major US pet and natural food retailers. Also
joining the team is Bill Porter, a local businessman with a
wealth of experience working with small, minority-owned
companies and now serving as OmniPro's part-time CFO.

Porter sees more success and profit ahead for the company
because of Kirtley's passion to create unique products that the
market wants. "Those are usually the best sellers, especially
in a small company," he says. "You live it, go to sleep with
it, wake up the next morning and it's still yours. And you're
just so committed, and I've always felt that's the best."

For the US launch Kirtley is also relying on her existing
partners at her contract manufacturers to deliver the volumes
needed for the US market. Both the dry and canned food
manufacturers have doubled capacity this year, with the final
phase of expansion for the canned manufacturer due in the first
quarter of 2008.

Made in the USA

Kirtley sees her relationships with these vendors as key to
OmniPro's success. "None of the plants I work with were
involved in this year's recalls because none of them import
ingredients," she says. (The lone exception is the lamb used in
some OmniPro dry foods, which comes from New Zealand. According
to Kirtley, because the US has had cases of BSE, other
countries require lamb used as an ingredient to be from New
Zealand or Australia.)

Kirtley says the fact that all other OmniPro ingredients are
US grown or produced has been a major selling point. "Our whole
concept is Made in the USA.' We have the American flag on
everything," she explains. "In overseas markets, Made in the
USA' carries a lot of weight, because it's perceived that we
can make a higher quality food than can be made in other
countries."

Kirtley believes that perception means the industry will
continue to prosper, despite the US recalls. "I still think the
US makes the best petfood on the planet, and everybody knows
that," she says. "Our plants are booming."

Her long-term goal is to come out with a dry petfood line to
match the holistic canned line. "That will be the only dry food
on the market with caviar in it," she says. "Conventional
wisdom says that a healthy diet is one low in fat and,
invariably, short on flavor. I beg to differ."

Business basics

Headquarters:
Madison, Mississippi, USA
Officers:
Leigh Kirtley, president; Bill Porter, CFO; Sheri
New,customer service
Brands:
OmniPro Superpremium dry foods, OmniPro Holistic canned
foods
Facilities:
All production done by contract manufacturers
Distribution:
Available in 21 countries in Asia, the Middle East and
Europe. Will be available at major US pet retailers
starting in the first quarter of 2008.
Employees:
6
Website:
www.omnipropet.net

A MAP for exporting US
petfoods

To market OmniPro and other pet products outside the US,
Leigh Kirtley arranges an exclusive distributorship in each
of the countries to which she exports. "We use the Market
Access Program, or MAP, which is part of the Foreign
Agriculture Service (FAS) within the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA)," Kirtley explains. MAP includes a
matching marketing funds program, which allows her
distributors to receive 50% back on their marketing plans
for the products they sell for her companies.

According to the FAS website (www.fas.usda.gov), MAP
uses funds from the USDA's Commodity Credit Corp. to "help
US producers, exporters, private companies and other trade
organizations finance promotional activities for US
agricultural products. MAP encouragesthe development,
maintenance and expansion of commercial export markets for
agricultural commodities." The program provides funding for
consumer promotions, market research, technical assistance
and trade servicing.

Working with an exclusive distributor in each of 21 countries outside the US, OmniPro uses a USDA program that gives the distributors matching marketing funds. This delivery van belongs to the distributor in Finland.

Debbie Phillips-Donaldson is editor-in-chief of Petfood Industry. Email her at dphillips@wattglobal.com.